David Plouffe’s next campaign: Steer Uber to victory

Plouffe joins a company with seemingly limitless ambitions. | Getty

Kalanick hasn’t been shy in recent months about voicing his desire for a top political operative to join Uber, talking to multiple other past Obama aides such as former White House press secretaries Robert Gibbs and Jay Carney.

“Our roots are technology, not politics, writing code and rolling out transportation systems,” Kalanick wrote. “The result is that not enough people here in America and around the world know our story, our mission and the positive impact we’re having. Uber has been in a campaign but hasn’t been running one. That is changing now.”

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Kalanick is understating Uber’s political capabilities. The company had already hired scores of local-level consultants and lobbyists to do battles in city halls and statehouses and has built up a D.C. office, recently hiring Brian Worth, a former aide to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), as its head of federal relations.

But Kalanick didn’t overplay the strength of his company’s nemesis: a taxi industry that, he wrote, has used “decades of political contributions and influence to restrict competition, reduce choice for consumers and put a stranglehold on economic opportunity for its drivers.”

The taxi companies essentially argue that Uber is a spoiled child, flush with venture capital funding and throwing tantrums about having to follow long-established safety and consumer protection rules. Plouffe’s hire didn’t change that impression.

“If Uber would simply obey the law, it wouldn’t have to concoct a make-believe conspiracy in which politicians somehow attempt to keep them out of their cities, and it wouldn’t have to hire an expensive political operative,” said Alfred LaGasse, the CEO of the Taxicab, Limousine & Paratransit Association. “By following the rules and meeting local public safety requirements like the rest of us, they wouldn’t need a ‘political campaign’ in the first place.”

Each new municipality or region where Uber launches has its own particular landscape, with status quos based on years of political compromises and fights among taxi drivers, passengers, medallion owners, politicians and regulators.

“They face a lot of political and regulatory obstacles,” said Joshua Schank, the president of the Eno Center for Transportation. “The biggest threat to their business model so far has been the regulatory challenges they face from state and local governments.”

In Illinois, for example, Uber’s opponents had the clout to win passage of legislation that the company says would kill its low-cost UberX service. Uber allies are lobbying Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn to veto the bill.

The Uber-Plouffe marriage unites a famously data-driven political consultant who spliced and diced the electorate with a company that automatically collects data on almost every part of its business, tracking drivers’ routes with GPS devices and asking passengers and drivers to rate one another.

Politicians on both sides of the aisle have recently tried to attach themselves to Uber’s brand of cool. Virginia Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Attorney General Mark Herring recently bragged about their role in winning Uber the temporary right to operate in the Old Dominion.

But Republicans especially have seen Uber’s embrace of free-market principles (embodied in the company’s surge pricing) and popularity as a way to woo young city-dwellers. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) visited Uber’s D.C. headquarters earlier this year, and the RNC launched a petition in support of the company earlier this month.